Leni Riefenstahl and Tiefland

Tiefland was reportedly Hitler’s favorite opera, but the film is completely cinematic with no music whatsoever, so it wasn’t adapted as an opera. Best known for her documentaries Triumph of the Will and Olympia, Tiefland was Leni Riefenstahl’s first (and last) foray into fictional cinema. She displays the tight storytelling (there’s hardly a wasted moment) and innovative camerawork that were both evident in her earlier films. No one does crowds of people like Riefenstahl, and in several scenes with groups of peasants, their movements are as gripping and surprising as the much larger groups in her other…